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Eugene Asti’s pioneering series, containing a large number of first recordings and rarities, concludes with this fifth volume, a generous two CDs for the price of one. It places Mendelssohn firmly in the canon of the great Lieder composers.» More

Mendelssohn seems to have finally hit the big league in this bicentenary year of his birth. Critical reappraisals of his music have confirmed this somewhat elusive composer as an important Romantic figure, and probably the greatest child prodigy o ...» More

Frage, to a poem by Mendelssohn’s tutor and friend Johann Gustav Droysen masquerading as ‘J N Voss’, encapsulates in a single page of music all the emotions most human beings feel at the moment when they first realize that their love for someone else just might be reciprocated. ‘Is it true?’ (‘Ist es wahr?’), we ask, and not just once: Mendelssohn’s persona makes the same words evoke doubt, a touch of fear, urgency and sweetness by turns.

Is it true? Is it true? That you constantly wait for me there in the arboured walk by the vineyard wall? And that you also question the moon and the stars about me? Is it true? Speak! What I am feeling, she alone understands, who feels with me and remains faithful to me.

Do you not know this glowing desire, This torment and this joy, Which with hope and fears Surge through this narrow breast? Can you not see how I quiver, Though I appear cold and smiling, How I struggle, how I strive Against your omnipotence?

Do you sense nothing of my pains, Have you no sympathy for me? Does no voice in your unviolated heart Speak for me? Let not the agony devour me, Ah, Maria, I beg you: be mine! I wish to belong to you alone, Wish to be utterly thine!

Mendelssohn was a composition student of Carl Friedrich Zelter, and so in his youth was the actor, baritone and theatre reformer Eduard Devrient, who supplied Mendelssohn with the words for the next song, Geständnis (‘Confession’). (Devrient sang the part of Christ in Felix’s 1829 revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.) In this song, the love-struck questioning continues, beginning with the same three-note query as before in the singer’s part, but the temperatures are hotter this time. The cliché of Mendelssohn the coolly classicizing adherent of abstract values is again put to the test by the almost violent expressivity of this song; it packs into one page as many different shades of amorous entreaty as a young, desperate, would-be lover could devise.

Know you not passionate longing, that torment and that joy? Which with hope and with fear surges through the confined breast? See you not, then, how I tremble, though I appear smiling and reserved? How I struggle, how I strive against your ascendancy?

Have you no intimation of my grief, have you no pity then for me? Does no voice speak for me in your innocent heart? Let not this torment consume me. Ah, Maria, please be mine! To you alone will I hearken. Yours alone I wish to be!

Oh, how fast the days fly by, Where yearning is newly aroused, Where flowers bloom again, And the spring laughs once more! All joy will arise, All will be fulfilled.

See how the days come and go, They pass by, heavy with blossom, Summer’s joy is soon fading away, And autumn winds are here. Oh, the wonderful blossoms and green fields Have once again disappeared!

This second ‘autumn’ song (sharing a common key as well as poetic sentiment with Herbstlied) is particularly effective in the way the piano left hand alternates between doubling the vocal line, supporting it, and at one point briefly setting up a counterpoint against it (‘Alle Wonne soll erstehen’ in the first verse) – all achieved with an enviable sleight of hand.

How gently the tide moves! How quietly she carries the boat! Life is far away, the Land of Youth! Far away lies the pain, to which I am bound, Carry me gently, tides, to the far-off land!

Up above is the stars’ silent place, Below the current flows on and on. You were indeed rich, my Land of Youth! Sweet was that which bound me there, Carry me gently, tides, to the far-off land!

Sophie Daneman and Nathan Berg share the two verses of this beautiful song from Op 9 between them. The sense of reflective longing which is such an overriding feature of this setting is mirrored in the way Mendelssohn tantalizingly delays the return to the tonic at the word ‘Fluten’ by a brief excursion through the relative minor.

The gentle breezes are awakened, They stir and whisper night and day, Everywhere active, creative. O fresh fragrance, O new sounds! Now, poor heart, be not afraid! Now must all things, all things change.

The world grows fairer with every day, We do not know what might yet be, The blooming will not end. The deepest, most distant valley now blooms: Now, poor heart, forget your torment. Now must all things, all things change.

The poet-politician-literary scholar Ludwig Uhland’s (1787–1862) words for Frühlingsglaube had already been rendered immortal in Franz Schubert’s setting from September 1820, but other composers were also drawn to this poem about the regeneration of hope in springtime. Where Schubert found a warm, gentle loveliness in these sentiments, Mendelssohn’s setting fizzes with joy and ricochets back and forth between full-throated exuberance and softer, sweeter anticipation of change to follow upon spring’s arrival. The shifting patterns in the piano part are further evidence of springtime energy renewed and of compositional ingenuity.

Gentle breezes awaken; they rustle and stir day and night; they blow all around me. Oh fresh scent, oh new sounds! Now, poor heart, do not be downcast, for now everything must change.

The world becomes lovelier with each new day. I do not know what will happen, for spring seems never-ending! The farthest, deepest valley is in bloom. Now, poor heart, forget your pain, for now everything must change.

In far-off places I wish to dream, There, where you are! Where from the snowlit ravines The streams froth into the lakes, There where you are, there where you are!

I wish to roam the mountains with you There, where you are, Where on the ice slopes chamois roam, In the warm valleys where figs ripen, There where you are, there where you are!

And secretly I think ahead To when you come home. Time cannot make me unhappy; We will still be the same When you come home, when you come home.

One of Mendelssohn’s most heart-warming utterances peppered at various points with directions such as dolce (sweetly) and con espressivo (with expression). Again Mendelssohn shows his sensitivity to the peculiar colour of certain keys by casting this ravishing miniature in the warm glow of E flat major.